Page:Steadfast Heart.djvu/356

 under consideration, which she could not solve without grave and prolonged reflection…. She was not one to reach an important conclusion in a day.

Lydia was not happy; she was not even contented. Life held no interest for her, and it was with the greatest difficulty her aunt persuaded her to go abroad at all in the most fascinating city in the world. If Lydia had been permitted her own way, she would have seen no more of Paris than was visible from the window of her bedroom. She was, to tell the truth, homesick—homesick for Rainbow—and heartsick, soul-sick for Angus Burke….

Her case seemed hopeless to her, as hopeless as if she were a prisoner in Paris and Angus a prisoner in Rainbow…. Titus Burke was the jailer who kept them apart with bolts and bars; kept them apart more inexorably than stone walls could have done…. The sight of Burke, his vague, but none the less dreadful resemblance to his son, arose before her hourly…. It made Angus repugnant to her, and yet she was sick for the want of him. It was a paradox. She loved Angus, yet the very thought of committing her life to his hands, of living with him under the same roof, in the full knowledge of Rainbow, filled her with sickening aversion…. It was not logical, not rational, perhaps…. Her